Contributing to VS Code extension for Arduino

Welcome, and thank you for your interest in contributing to the VS Code extension for Arduino!

There are many ways that you can contribute, beyond writing code. The goal of this document is to provide a high-level overview of how you can get involved.

Contributing Fixes

If you are interested in writing code to fix issues, first look at the issues with the help-wanted label. They should have the context and code pointers needed to get started. If not, then feel free to ask for some, and we will be happy to provide any guidance you need.

When you are doing code fix, please work against main branch and also submit pull request to main branch. Production releases will be tagged from main.

Reporting Issues

Have you identified a reproducible problem? Have a feature request? We want to hear about it! Here's how you can make reporting your issue as effective as possible.

Look For an Existing Issue

Before you create a new issue, please do a search in open issues to see if the issue or feature request has already been filed.

Be sure to scan through the most popular issues.

If you find your issue already exists, make relevant comments and add your reaction. Use a reaction in place of a "+1" comment:

👍 - upvote
👎 - downvote

Subscribe to such issues so that you are kept up to date about the progress.

If you cannot find an existing issue that describes your bug or feature, create a new issue using the guidelines below.

Writing Good Bug Reports and Feature Requests

File a single issue per problem and feature request. Do not enumerate multiple bugs or feature requests in the same issue.

Do not add your issue as a comment to an existing issue unless it's for the identical input. Many issues look similar, but have different causes.

The more information you can provide, the more likely someone will be successful reproducing the issue and finding a fix.

Please include the following with each issue:

Version of VS Code and this extension
OS/Platform you are working on
Reproducible steps (1... 2... 3...) that cause the issue
What you expected to see, versus what you actually saw
Images, animations, or a link to a video showing the issue occurring
A code snippet that demonstrates the issue or a link to a code repository the developers can easily pull down to recreate the issue locally
- Note: Because the developers need to copy and paste the code snippet, including a code snippet as a media file (i.e. .gif) is not sufficient.
Errors from the Dev Tools Console (open from the menu: Help > Toggle Developer Tools -> Console)

Final Checklist

Please remember to do the following:

Search the issue repository to ensure your report is a new issue
Simplify your code around the issue to better isolate the problem

Don't feel bad if others can't reproduce the issue right away. They will simply ask for more information!

Follow Your Issue

Once submitted, your report will go into the issue tracking workflow. Be sure to understand what will happen next, so you know what to expect, and how to continue to assist throughout the process.

Thank You!

Your contributions to open source, large or small, make great projects like this possible. Thank you for taking the time to contribute.